Cartoonist Jim Woodring Wields 7-Foot Pen, Strikes Arty Blow

Artist and cartoonist Jim Woodring has a professional fetish for the pen and inkwell. So he’s built a 7-foot-tall version to show off to noobs and silence fluid-dynamics doubters.

His outsize version of the traditional steel dip pen, with its lengthy poplar handle, is a calligrapher’s inky dream. It features a brass-plated, hand-engraved, 16-inch steel nib and comes with an inkwell vase filled with blended acrylic ink.

“The point was to bring into the world a large functioning pen and see what can be done with it,” the award-winning Woodring told Wired.com in an e-mail chat.

The cartoonist, whose Weathercraft was one of 2010’s most surreal and entertaining comics, will find out exactly what his giant pen can do during Nibbus Maximus, his excellently titled Sunday performance at Seattle’s Gage Academy of Art.

Woodring’s plan is to create massive drawings, measuring up to 4 feet by 6 feet, while conversing with the audience about the singular artiness of pen and ink. What will actually happen is anyone’s guess.

Jim Woodring's pen-and-ink fetish comes to surreal life in Weathercraft, one of 2010's finest comics.

“It may be that the drawings made with it are too awful to keep, or it may be that they have qualities unattainable any other way,” Woodring said. “It may be that I won’t be able to operate the pen well but someone else will. We’ll see.”

When Woodring announced the project in early 2010, skeptical commenters on Boing Boing and elsewhere doubted the gigantic writing utensil would work. But Woodring has put his king-size fetish to the test ahead of its debut performance, and is suitably convinced of the pen’s potential.

“I drew a 30-foot line with it and made some drawings on newsprint, which were crude but sufficient to convince me that the thing works,” he said.

“Learning to use it well is another proposition entirely,” Woodring added. “It’s very heavy and awkward, and all the problems that arise when learning to use a dip pen have to be conquered anew. In a way, it would make more sense to learn to use it well before demonstrating it, but a variety of factors, including the terms under which the funds to make the pen were raised, make this learning-in-public approach necessary.”

Funds were raised through United States Artists, while dozens of interested parties and artists contributed time and effort to Woodring’s weird project. At the Seattle exhibition, attendees will be able to try out pen-and-ink supplies and even score beginner instruction from Seattle’s Friends of the Nib.

The project is an ambitious extension of Woodring’s rewarding work, which continues this year when his follow-up to Weathercraft, called Congress of the Animals, arrives in April.

Perhaps his geeky ambition will catch on in the often-disposable comics universe.

“Comics could use more creators with something worthwhile to say,” Woodring said.